Decrease font Decrease font
Decrease font Decrease font
Enlarge font Enlarge font
Enlarge font Enlarge font

Executive MBA students tour Russia, UAEExecutive MBA students tour Russia, UAE

Working professionals in Thunderbird’s Executive MBA program met high-profile business and political leaders this April during overlapping field seminars that combined classroom instruction with site visits in Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

“If business leaders are to gain any true understanding of a country’s economic and social environment, they must ‘get on the ground’ — immerse themselves in that environment,” said Thunderbird adjunct professor Linda Wetzel, who accompanied the Russian group. “Even the most eloquent and revealing of texts and case studies can provide only part of the picture.” 

Students who chose the UAE option toured Zayed University, visited Ambassador Richard Olson at the U.S. Embassy and met several Thunderbird alumni living and working in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Thunderbird Global Council member Salman Chaudhry, a 1988 graduate, hosted the students at his home in Dubai for an alumni networking event, and students also met Vasan Moorthy, an Executive MBA Europe graduate from 2009, and vice president in charge of mortgage sales at the Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. Moorthy shared insights on the global recession and its impact in the Middle East.

Thunderbird Professor Anne Stringfellow, Ph.D., said the effects of the recession were easy to spot.

“Dubai is a changed place since my last visit in July 2008,” she said. “In July it was all hustle and bustle and traffic jams. That's all gone now, and the city is much calmer, with construction idled on partially finished buildings and roads much emptier.”

The UAE team also included Thunderbird Professor Karen Walch, Ph.D., adjunct professor Julia Devlin from the World Bank in Washington, and program manager Aminda Parafinik, a 2008 Thunderbird graduate.

“As an educator, I could not ask for a more vibrant classroom setting,” Walch said.  “The UAE provided a context where we could not only study, but also experience on a social and emotional level, the meaning of globalism, culture, power and trust when negotiating in this region of the world.”

Students who studied in Russia met executives from the oil and gas, banking, accounting and consulting industries. They also met the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, toured a factory and visited a Russian Orthodox cathedral.

“The trip to Russia was designed to give as much introduction to the country as possible in only a few days,” said Dennis Hopple, director of Thunderbird’s Center for Business Skills Development, which provides middle-management nondegree certificates in Moscow. “Although Russia is no longer a communist superpower, it is a powerful country with extraordinary natural resource wealth and nuclear weapons.”

Students appreciated an inside look at the developing market that has emerged from the former Soviet Union. "Who would have thought 10 years ago that we would be in Moscow, in this place?” student Todd Pearce said during a visit to the Kremlin. “What an honor it is."

The Center for Business Skills Development organized the site visits in Moscow and St. Petersburg and lined up guest speakers from companies such as TNK-BP, Philip Morris, Citi Corp. and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The center also hosted classes taught by Thunderbird professors Denis LeClerc, Ph.D., and Wetzel. 

Executive MBA Arizona director Joseph Babcock, who is also an alumnus of the school, and senior program coordinator Wendy Cano handled other logistics.

Overall, about 50 students participated in the twin excursions, which were the second of three field seminars included in the 17-month Executive MBA Arizona program. Students visited Geneva in November 2008 and will choose between China or Chile and Peru in September.

Thunderbird’s Executive MBA program includes classes on alternating weekends in Arizona. A similar program in Geneva includes one-week residential study modules every six weeks.